A Reader in Seattle

January 22, 2002

Dear Mister Daniel Pinkwater, Sir.

[Or is that Sir Mister Dear Daniel Pinkwater? Or … Oh never mind.]

Dear Sir.

Many years ago, I heard your voice on my car radio. I was in Arizona and it was hot. You were talking about walking around in a [presumably cool] mall and getting into a light sabre fight with a boy who had been following you around. I also learned during the same radio broadcast, that you were a “children’s book” author. Not too long after that, my son was born. I decided that my son must read quality children’s books. In spite of this, I never forgot my experience with your voice and decided to provide my son with book that were written by yourself. To read. He read lots of them and still has some of them. Later, my daughter came along and she discovered your books for herself (although she seemed to read an entirely different set of books than her brother; hers were thinner). Now, my son is in high school and I am up past midnight waiting for him to finish a research project for school that’s due for his history class in the morning. Obviously, sir, one of us is getting older. And I think it’s all because I listened to your radio programs on NPR. [Perhaps I have symptoms of early- onset Pinkwater’s disease.]

No matter. The interesting thing is that I found this website. My sister is in a class for people who want to be librarians and she and her classmates were partcipating in an “on-line chat” group which was discussing things that only librarians truly want to know (like how to arrange books in public so that thy can find them and people like us can’t even though we are looking right at them …). Anyway, their teacher, who may or may not have actually have been online during their chat (or may actually, and more likely, have been on some beach in Mexico at the time with her laptop and wireless modem card) was discussing the difficulties of filing books by authors who use many different names for themselves on books that they write and she (for some obscure reason) referred to you. I believe she may even have submitted something to this very same forum, probably from that very same beach in Mexico.

But, more importantly, it is later now. And I am in Seattle. And it is cold (and wet) outside. And I am no longer in Arizona listening to my radio. And my son has disappeared, which is a good sign, as it may imply that he has actually finished his homework for the night. So, once again, I am moved to remark that one of us has gotten older. And I am sure that it is you, sir, as I have already admitted my guilt. And so, if I had a virtual light sabre, I would challange you to a virtual light sabre fight in a virtual mall somewhere in America. But I don’t. And, certainly, neither of us would be that childish. Alas.

So. For now, I bid you adieu and adios. But remember, the mall is not big enough for both of us.

P.S. Thank you for bringing me so many enjoyable evenings of reading “children’s books” to my children and thank you also for those NPR recordings that I did get to listen to so many years ago while driving to work in my car …

No authors or children were harmed in the making of this posting.